


The Blades

by Masu_Trout



Category: Deus Ex (Video Games)
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, First Time, Hand Jobs, M/M, Oops All Adams, clone theory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-10-12 06:30:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20559785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Masu_Trout/pseuds/Masu_Trout
Summary: Adam wakes up in a cold white room, confused and panicked—but not alone.





	The Blades

**Author's Note:**

  * For [originally](https://archiveofourown.org/users/originally/gifts).

Adam woke like a drowning man: thrashing, panicked, gasping for breath. There was nothing but darkness in every direction, darkness and an aching bone-deep cold, and the more he tried to remember things he knew were real (Megan, his parents, sunlight and warmth and a world outside of this), the more the memories felt like old photographs, growing more faded and unreal with every passing moment and he needed to fight this but he _couldn't_—

The first breath of air was a shock. The second was a miracle.

He stumbled forward blindly on legs too weak to carry him; two shaky steps and he was collapsing to his hands and knees. He hacked up lungfuls of thick, mucus-like fluid—damn, what _was_ that? It was smeared across his skin, too viscous to be water and too cold to be blood—and blinked against the too-intense light.

He was alive. He was real. He was crouched, naked and trembling, on an off-white tile floor.

"What the hell," he said, dragging a hand through the slime clinging to his face.

"Yeah," echoed a voice from somewhere above him, "I think that about sums it up."

Adam blinked. The voice sounded familiar, somehow, though it wasn't Rodriguez or Addams or Morrissey or any of the others from his unit. It almost reminded him of...

He looked up. And stopped. And stared.

It couldn't be _him_. It wasn't him. But it was as if someone had taken his body and run it through a filter. Some of it was perfect: his hair, his bone structure, his skin; all of that was entirely, eerily him, just aged a decade. Too good to fake. And some of it... some of it was _wrong_.

His duplicate's arms were cold black steel, gleaming under the harsh light, segmented and artificial. His eyes were covered by dark lenses, set into the bone; they made his face look alien and cruel. It wasn't a human standing in front of him. It was a weapon. 

Adam glanced down at his own hands, terrified for a moment that he'd find them transformed into metal without him realizing. This wasn't happening. None of it was real. This was a nightmare, or somebody's sick idea of a joke, or—

He didn't realize he was muttering to himself until the stranger wearing his face sighed. One corner of his mouth pulled up into an entirely humorless smile. "Trust me, I wish it was. But"—he shrugged, too casual about this by half—"I don't think either of us is that lucky."

"Who..." Adam swallowed. "Who are you?"

"Who are _you_?" echoed his duplicate.

"You know who I am," snarled Adam. And then, because he had to, because he needed to hear the words out loud to make them real again: "Adam Jensen. DPD, Swat Team Two." Stupidly, desperately, he added, "And it's a crime to impersonate a police officer."

The man who wasn't him made a noise like he'd had the breath kicked out of him. "You," he said, and then, "I." He stopped, pressed two of those strange metal fingers against the bridge of his nose. (_God_, wondered Adam, watching him, how augmented was this man? His arms were metal all the way up—did his legs match too? Were the parts of him that looked like skin even actually real flesh at all? Maybe that was how he'd made himself so similar to Adam: some kind of advanced augmentation tech, letting him remold his face however he liked. Adam wasn't an expert; he didn't know if that was even possible.) "What's the last thing you remember?"

Adam snorted. "Why would I tell you that?" Even as he said it, though, he was desperately thinking back, trying to rack his brain for clues about what the hell was going on.

He remembered finishing up the last of his mission report. It was one of Megan's rare nights free from the lab, and he wanted to meet her for dinner. He'd sent over the files, locked his office behind him, headed down the massive concrete steps... 

And then nothing. Not even fragments; it was like his memory was a faulty tape, cut off too early. He must've been kidnapped, to wind up in this strange, cold, white-tiled room with an even stranger and colder impostor watching over him, but he couldn't remember a single moment of it. He must have fought back, right? And yet...

The impostor sighed. "I guess that's fair." He crouched down, sending Adam scrambling backwards for cover, and reached out with one gold-and-black hand. "Please," he continued, "I know you don't trust me right now. _I_ wouldn't trust me right now, so... but the situation isn't what you think it is. The _world_ isn't what you think it is. And if we stay here much longer, we're both going to be in trouble."

"What," asked Adam, "come with me if you want to live?" This guy sure as hell looked enough like the Terminator, anyway.

The man who wasn't him almost smiled at that. "I guess so, yeah." 

"You're right," Adam said, "I don't trust you," though even as he said it he knew that wasn't exactly true. He _shouldn't_ trust this walking nightmare, didn't want to trust him; every word out of his mouth, spoken in Adam's own voice, sounded more and more absurd. But... there was something grotesquely, upsettingly honest about him all the same. Megan always told Adam he wasn't a good judge of character—too honest, too willing to see the good in people—but he knew his own character and he knew he wouldn't speak that way to someone unless he was telling the truth.

Every part of this stranger was an unsettling mirror; his body language, his expressions, his movements, all twisted by the metal embedded in him into something bizarre and harsh. But not unrecognizable.

Adam swallowed. "Look. I'll go with you. Just—tell me who you are?"

There had to be an explanation, no matter how far-fetched; a hallucination, maybe, or some high-tech body double. But Adam wasn't expecting the stranger to laugh humorlessly, and he wasn't expecting him to press a hand against his face and say, "Good question." He sucked in a breath, and—reluctantly, every word slow and soft like they were being being forced from his lungs—added, "I thought I was Adam. But if you're here..."

That wasn't a good answer. It was barely an answer at all. But Adam still found himself nodding and saying, "Okay."

* * *

They emerged from that small white room into one of the strangest places Adam had ever laid eyes on: not a hallway, or even another room, but a massive vertical shaft at least five stories deep formed out of concrete and surrounded by scaffolding and masses of pipes and wires. The room was lined on all sides by a hivelike collection of storage containers, each secured in an alcove cut into the concrete; when Adam turned, he saw the room they'd just emerged from was a container too.

_VersaLife_ the side of the container read in glowing white letters. The name sounded familiar, though Adam couldn't quite place it. Maybe Megan had applied there once?

The other Adam—_Jensen_, Adam had decided to call him, because if he was Jensen then he could be a cousin, a distant relative, a stranger whose face and life both just happened to mirror Adam's own, anything at all that gave him less claim to Adam's life and name—jumped down from the cubicle onto the scaffolding below, then offered Adam his hand. Adam hesitated a moment before taking it. The texture was every bit as inorganic as he'd expected, but oddly warm.

Jensen helped him down to the next level of scaffolding. Then he paused a moment, looking Adam up and down, and frowned.

"Hold on," was the only thing he said before he leaped—ten feet straight up, _shit_—onto a floor a level above them both and disappeared into a container just like the one they'd left. He reappeared a moment later holding a bundle of clothes under his arm, and tossed them down to Adam before jumping casually back down to land on the scaffolding next to him once more. 

"We're going to have to move quickly," he said as Adam pulled on a set of clothes that was more like armor. "Stay close, and keep your voice down."

"Where are we?" he asked.

"Palisade Bank's corporate vaults."

"Palisade... is that in Lansing?" And then reality caught up with him. "Wait, a _bank_?"

The corner of Jensen's mouth twitched. "Not Lansing, no. And yeah, a bank. That's why we need to stay quiet."

_A bank._ He'd woken up on the floor of a strange room, looking a stranger in the all-too-familiar face—and now, apparently, he'd thrown himself right in the middle of an active bank robbery. What the hell.

"What..." Adam started, then instead decided to whisper, "How are we going to get out?" As much as he wanted to know what Jensen had come here to take, it probably wasn't a good idea to risk antagonizing a criminal when he was alone and weaponless and stuck inside a high-security area with him.

"Palisade Bank's proud of its security. They consider this place unhackable—which means it's full of weak points." He pointed two fingers towards the ceiling. "We just need to go up."

Jensen led him on a slow, careful path across the scaffolding and up ladder after ladder. The caution, Adam suspected, was more for his benefit than Jensen's own. Sometimes he'd forget himself and take a running leap across a dizzying gap or scramble up to the next floor without even using the ladder—and then he'd flinch, and turn back to Adam, and offer him a hand again.

It was... strange. He wasn't sure how to feel about this person who wasn't him being so much _more_ than he was: faster, stronger, more agile. Augmentation really was something else. No wonder some people feared it.

Finally, they reached the top of the enormous pit, and with it a door set into the wall labeled VAULT SHAFT ACCESS. It opened with a hum when Jensen passed a mechanical hand over the keypad. Did he work here after all, then? Or had he stolen someone's credentials? Adam didn't have long to wonder; Jensen stepped through without hesitation and waved Adam along behind him.

Another ladder, a ventilation grate set low into the wall that had them both crawling on their hands and knees—and then as they stood Jensen stopped in front of a fan, half his size, set into the wall in front of them and spinning so fast it was just a droning blur of metal.

"Fuck," Adam said. There was nowhere else to go but backwards; Jensen must have meant for that to be their way out. But unless one of them was willing to feed it a limb... he glanced at Jensen's metal arms. "I don't suppose you keep spares of those, do you?"

Jensen followed his gaze, then snorted. "I don't think we need to get that drastic."

"I mean, if you have any ideas—"

Casually, almost lazily, Jensen waved a hand in the fan's general direction. It made a crunching sort of noise, metal scraping against itself—and then whirred to a gentle stop as the two of them watched. The now-still blades framed a perfect path into the room beyond.

Jensen wasn't smiling. Adam wouldn't have smiled, if it was him who'd managed that. He would've just crossed his arms, leaned back, and enjoyed the feeling of being right. 

Jensen crossed his arms and leaned back against the concrete wall. "It's not going to hold forever. We need to keep moving."

"Damn it," Adam sighed under his breath, and and crawled through the hole.

* * *

The ventilation shaft let out into a parking garage filled with the impossibly high-tech cars, each of them bearing a license plate different than any Adam had ever seen: wrong shape, wrong size, with a flag he didn't recognize stamped in the corner. Adam stopped short.

"Seriously," he said, "where are we?"

Jensen sighed. "We need to keep—"

"_I_ need to know where this place is."

For a moment he was silent, watching Adam, his eyes unreadable behind those thick opaque lenses, and then he said, "You haven't heard of Palisade? The company made international news when it decided to build its headquarters here."

"I don't hear about every piece of news."

"I did, though." Jensen seemed to be talking to himself more than Adam. "I was standing in the kitchen, flicking through the news, and when the spokesperson came on Megan said—"

"_How do you know about Megan_?" The words tore themselves out of his mouth in a furious, animal snarl; this man had his face, his voice, and now he wanted to act like he had—

like he knew—

Adam was shaking. He held his hands up in front of his face and saw that they were trembling. This man didn't have the right to claim his life like this. His friends, his family, his thoughts... they could only belong to one person, and if that person wasn't Adam...

He wanted, suddenly and furiously, to fight Jensen, to rip those memories straight out of his chrome-plated skull. He'd lose, of course he'd lose, there was no way he could beat a man who was half machine; it didn't stop him from wanting to try.

Jensen was watching him still. He shifted, looking almost uncomfortable—and then, with a sharp mechanical _whirr_, the glasses slid away from his eyes.

Green was the first thing Adam noticed, green and gold in bright concentric rings that looked equal parts beautiful and bizarre, and he couldn't help but reach a hand up to touch his own blue eyes. Hands, eyes, skull... maybe it was an understatement to call Jensen _half _machine. 

His artificial eyes were full of pity. "Still in the DPD," he said, "haven't heard of Palisade yet—you're what, twenty-eight?"

"Twenty-six," Adam said reluctantly.

"Twenty-six. Fuck. I... I'd rather explain this to you once. Just a little farther, I promise. It'll make more sense once you're outside."

Adam was starting to think he didn't _want_ this to make sense. He nodded, numb with something that he could barely admit to himself was dread, and followed at Jensen's heels as the two of them emerged from the parking garage and onto...

It was a city street, bustling with people, familiar and yet somehow impossibly wrong—like looking through the same broken mirror that had taken his face and turned it into Jensen's. People brushed past him, talking in English or in a language he didn't recognize, occasionally pausing to give Jensen dirty looks; police officers in hulking mechanical suits stomped back and forth in loose patrols; beggars with mechanical limbs shouted out to passers-by. Somewhere further in the distance, between two apartment buildings, he could see the shimmering blue of a river—and, rising out of that river, a glowing white structure in the shape of a forever-frozen wave.

He was in another country. That much was obvious, and it didn't make sense that he could be kidnapped and flown to another part of the world without even knowing it but at least it was something he could hope to explain if he tried hard enough. What _couldn't_ be explained was the way people walking past him talked casually on phones, the sheer sci-fi strangeness of the clothing everyone wore, the posters hanging above advertising movies with release dates more than a decade away.

"No," Adam said. He clenched his hands, digging his fingernails into his palms until the pain was all he could feel.

"Welcome to Prague," Jensen said quietly. He reached out, then flinched away before he could touch Adam's shoulder. His voice horribly, overwhelmingly sympathetic, he added, "Twenty twenty-nine."

It couldn't be true. It couldn't _not_ be true. Adam wanted to vomit. "Am I... am I your clone, then? Is that was this is? Give someone your memories as some sort of sick joke—"

To his surprise, Jensen shook his head. "No. I don't think so."

Adam blinked. He thought back to the way Jensen had first reacted to Adam lying on the cold tile floor, hacking up slick clear gunk from his lungs (and how had Adam not guessed then?). "You weren't expecting to find me."

"No."

"Then what..." Adam sucked in an unsteady breath. "Who are you? Who are we?"

"It's a bit of a long story. And it's not exactly easy to tell. I don't understand it all myself." Jensen took a step forward. "Walk with me?"

Adam followed as Jensen set a meandering path down one of Prague's—_Prague's_—side streets, taking them further away from the masses of people near the bank. Once they had enough space to not be overheard, he continued. "So, first of all, we're adopted."

* * *

They walked for hours under the light of the moon, stopping every so often to dodge a police patrol or just to sit in silence for a while. The story Jensen told him then was too bizarre to be believed; if he weren't standing here, a decade in the future, talking to a man wearing his face, he never would have accepted it for a moment.

He'd been born in a lab, the result of a genetic experiment, rescued when he was still too young to remember most of what had happened to him. (_Most_ being the key word there; some of his half-remembered childhood nightmares suddenly made a lot more sense.) His parents had lied to him his whole life—were they afraid? Or did they just not want to admit they hadn't had him the normal way?—and then Megan had lied to him too.

It felt like only yesterday that he'd woken up next to her; for him, it had been only yesterday. But it was a decade ago, and it hadn't been real, and it had never happened to _him_ at all.

Jensen told him about Mexicantown. His voice was torn between disgust and awe when he spoke about David Sarif and his amazing, too-good-to-be-true job offer. He explained the attack and—his face drawn and cold, his mechanical hands tensing and relaxing—the augmentation that followed, hunting down the Tyrants and Zhao Yun Ru and Darrow; and then, his voice a low growl, he told Adam what happened at Panchaea.

"The whole place sank. I remember falling into the water. And then I wake up in a lab in Alaska, and six months have gone by. They told me they pulled me out of the ocean."

"Oh," Adam said, realizing.

It shouldn't have been a comfort to realize he might not be _this_ Adam's duplicate, that there was some third Adam Jensen out there who they'd both had their lives built around. Where was he now, Adam wondered, somewhere deep in beneath the waves? Or was he trapped in another tank like Adam's, caught in cold dark stasis with no one to set him free?

He should have felt guilty, he was sure, knowing he was intruding on two different versions of himself just by existing. But it was... comforting, somehow, to know he wasn't alone. He and Jensen were in this together.

(Assuming Jensen wouldn't see him as nothing more than a grotesque reminder, assuming he wouldn't want Adam gone from his life as soon as possible. He didn't think he'd cast himself aside like that, if it were him, but—he didn't have the scars this Adam did, or the augs, or the ten years of stress marking his face. In some ways, they were still very different people.)

They'd slowly meandered towards rougher and rougher parts of the city through their walk: more augmented beggars on each street corner, more shops with metal grates installed over the windows and doors, fewer and fewer cops bothering to keep some semblance of a patrol. Before Adam could ask another question, Jensen stopped outside a block of apartments. Graffiti and half-dead ivy crawled across the weather-worn stone. 

"Would you like to come in?"

"Ah," Adam said, realizing, and then, "Yes. Please."

Jensen's apartment was on the top floor, and every floor they passed on their way up had an augmented person camped out somewhere near the stairwell. Each of them was wrapped in layers of blankets or cardboard to keep out the late night chill. Some of them were asleep. Others watched him and Jensen as they passed. Adam tried not to flinch away—these people were like him, after all, or they would be like him or they could have been like him, or.... 

_Ugh_, he thought. This was all too confusing. And it didn't help that every time he caught a glimpse of a metal limb, all he could imagine was how those saws must have felt when they carved through that first, original Adam's bones. Some memories he was glad he'd missed out on getting.

"Why do you think I'm younger?" he asked once they were through the door to Jensen's apartment. (Good decor. He approved.) 

Jensen paused in the middle of shrugging off his trenchcoat. "I'd guess you're not finished," he said. "I wasn't supposed to find you. They won't be happy once they realize you're missing."

_Not finished_. Adam shivered. Someone out there had been holding him as, what, backup? In case Jensen got himself killed again? Or in case they needed some second Jensen? He could've had his limbs cut off and welded to metal while he was asleep, could've ended up a weapon held at his own throat.

Adam shook his head, trying to banish the images that thought brought up.

"You want something?" Jensen asked. "I've got food, water..."

He _was_ hungry, but right now just the idea of eating made his stomach turn. He thought for a moment, looking around the apartment, until the absurdly high-tech TV covering most of one living room wall caught his eye.

"They still have baseball in the future?" he asked, and risked a smile.

Jensen smiled back, small and crooked. It cut a few years off his face. "Sure do. Tigers aren't doing too bad, either." 

"Well, that'll be a nice change." He walked over to the couch and collapsed into the overstuffed leather cushions. His skin still felt tacky from the goop inside that strange chamber, but it would wash off. He hoped. 

Jensen sat next to him, just far enough away to offer him a little space, and turned the TV on with a flick of his fingers. The game he chose was a recording from mid-September, old to Jensen and hopelessly new to Adam. He didn't know why he'd expected to recognize the players, but somehow he had. The parade of unfamiliar names and jerseys made him more homesick than waking up in another country had. If even this was wrong...

Adam shifted. Jensen looked sideways at him, too-casual, and then said, "That guy there, Gonzales? He's been having a good season. Talk online is he might have a shot at Rookie of the Year."

"Yeah?" 

"Yeah. I thought they were crazy when they picked him, but he's good. Amazing fastball."

"Huh." Adam leaned forward, watching the players onscreen a little more intently, and Jensen seemed to take that as a cue; he started a running commentary—which players to watch for, who was who was who on the opposing team, explanations of the strange and subtle ways the game had changed in the past ten years—until the ache of the unfamiliar wasn't quite so strong. Odd, to have his own voice in his ear explaining baseball to him, but... not _bad_ odd. 

Somewhere around the third inning, his eyes started to feel heavier and heavier. He struggled to keep them open (he'd spent his entire existence so far sleeping, wasn't that enough?) but the further underway the game got the more it felt like he had cement blocks tied to his eyelids.

The last thing Adam remembered was the roar of the crowd, the _crack_ of bat against ball—and Jensen's voice, calm and quiet, pulling him under.

* * *

When he woke, the TV was still on, but turned to a black screen. The faint glow cast just enough light to see by and painted the room in soft grays and blacks. Adam yawned, shifted—and stopped. There was something sharp under his head, too hard to be his bed, almost metallic...

"Shit," Adam said, scrambling upright. "Sorry." Of _course_ he'd end up using Jensen's shoulder as a pillow. As if this night—day, now?—needed to get any more bizarre.

"Don't worry about it," Jensen said. The rings of gold in his uncovered irises caught the dim light, making them shine like a cat's. No wonder he had those lenses. 

He was leaning against the back of the cushions, the arm that hadn't been trapped under Adam draped over the back of the couch. Close enough for Adam to touch.

Adam almost did touch them, then. He reached out without even thinking, half-asleep and weary down to his bones, and only paused when Jensen flinched away from his touch. Adam froze. Jensen froze too, and then all at once both of them were talking over each other.

"Sorry," Jensen said, at the same time as Adam went, "I shouldn't have—"

They both froze for a second time. Finally, Jensen shook his head. "It's not your fault. Don't worry. I'm just jumpy."

"No, I..."

"Seriously," Jensen said firmly, and then he reached out and took Adam's hand and pressed it against his mechanical shoulder. "It's... people get a little forward sometimes." He grimaced. "But it makes sense if you're curious. It's a little different from, well"—he nodded towards Adam's own flesh arm—"what you're used to."

"A little different, yeah." 

Even with permission, it still felt strange; running his hand over the sleek, dark metal, both knowing it was part of someone's body (his own body) and feeling like he was touching a car or a gun. In the dark, he couldn't make out any of the subtle color differences or gold accents he'd noticed before. He could feel the shape of it under his fingers, though: metal molded in the vague shape of human tendon and muscle, chrome giving way to an almost plasticky-feeling mesh at the joint of the inner elbow, hands and fingers made from what had to be hundreds of precise mechanical parts. It reminded Adam of one of the clocks he had—or thought he had—been taking apart last week. He couldn't help but wonder if Jensen ever took himself apart that way: hand opened up, gears and wires and servos spread out across every available surface.

It wasn't as bad as he'd thought. Not _monstrous_, at least, not the nightmarish thing he'd expected when he first saw Jensen standing over him. Almost elegant, in a way. Adam mapped the shape of the arm, more curious than he'd been willing to admit, glad that the darkness of the room hid just how badly flushed his face had to be by now, and then when he interlaced the mechanical fingers with his own just to see how it felt Jensen made a quiet little noise between his teeth.

"Sorry," Adam said again, pulling back. Had he hurt him? Was there something wrong with his fingers?

But Jensen didn't look like he'd been hurt. It was hard to tell, in the dim light, but as far as Adam could see he mostly just seemed embarrassed. He was staring up at the ceiling with his head tilted back, fingers on the hand Adam had been touching clenching and unclenching, and his mouth was a crooked line. "You're fine," he said, and squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. "It's not you. It's just..."

_Huh_, Adam thought. It was a stupid hunch, the kind of wild leaping to conclusions that would have gotten him laughed at if he were on a case, but—this _was_ him, more or less. He had a feeling he knew what had been going through Jensen's mind just then, what had made him try to hold in a gasp. It was the same thing that had been going through Adam's.

"Hey." He leaned closer into Jensen's space and pressed one of his hands along the curve of Jensen's jaw. His beard was thicker than Adam's. Under it, Adam could feel the shape of something embedded into the skin. "Look at me?"

Jensen went very, very still. "I don't think this is a good idea."

"It isn't," Adam admitted, "but neither was rescuing me."

Jensen frowned. "That's different."

"Yeah. _This_ is a lot less likely to get you killed."

He could hardly believe what he was offering. (What he was _proposing_.) But here, alone in a strange world, his friends and family out of reach, the woman he'd thought he loved a stranger in more ways than one, he desperately wanted something familiar. If the only person he could recognize anymore was himself, then that would have to be enough.

Jensen was an odd sort of mirror: wounded and older and cynical in a way Adam barely recognized, but with a bravery and a calm sort of self-assurance Adam could only hope he might have someday. When Adam looked at him, he felt like it could be enough.

"God," Jensen said—to the ceiling, or the walls, or no one in particular—and then he reached out and cupped Adam's chin and pressed their mouths together.

It was so much, all at once. Noises that sounded like him spilling out of another person's mouth, hands he kept having to remind himself were human tugging at his clothes and slipping beneath his stolen shirt. Adam ran his hands down Jensen's torso, feeling skin and metal beneath his shirt, and then opened his mouth for Jensen when he licked at the seam of his lips. 

"Fuck," he murmured into Jensen's mouth, breaking the kiss to stare at him. Adam was already panting; Jensen's breathing was steady, but his eyes had gone wide and dark. "I want—"

He couldn't explain what he wanted. To forget. To wake up back in the life he knew. To find the people who'd done this to him and Jensen both and destroy them. To curl up here, in the dark, and never have to think about anything except the soft mechanical thump of Jensen's heart next to his ever again. 

"You," he finished, lamely.

"You're going to regret it," Jensen told him. "All of this. You're different, you're not"—he cut himself off, then, spreading his augmented fingers to show Adam what he meant—"you know. You're not tied to this."

"And then what," asked Adam, "I go back to Detroit? Get an apartment, try to pretend I'm just another person?"

Jensen shrugged, and didn't say no. 

Adam scrambled forward until he was straddling Jensen's hips, until he was eye-to-eye with himself. He could feel the outline of Jensen's dick pressed against his pants. "I won't," he said, and ground his hips against Jensen's to hear him moan. "I'm already involved. I don't care about staying safe. There _has_ to be a way to stop these people, right? I can help you."

"Ah." Jensen groaned. "I forgot what being twenty-six was like."

"Shut up," Adam said, and kissed him again.

This time Jensen didn't try to back off; his hands were in Adam's hair, his mouth opened for Adam, he moved back against Adam when Adam squirmed. It was frantic and desperate, with Jensen so overwhelmingly _close_, and—Adam had never touched another person like this before, had he? Not really, anyway, not in this body. 

He had the memories. It shouldn't have been any different. But there was something about the feeling of another person's skin those transplanted memories hadn't been able to give him.

They fumbled against each other, trying to figure out bodies that were just different enough to fit awkwardly, until finally Jensen let his hands slip from Adam's hair and dragged them down Adam's torso to their hips. He tugged at the zipper of Adam's pants, popped the button off and forced the cloth aside, and then his hands were on Adam's dick and all Adam could do was groan.

"Fuck," Adam said, and then "please," rutting clumsily against Jensen's hands. It was different from anything Adam expected—artificial and smooth and so, so warm—and he just wanted _more_. He buried his face in the side of Jensen's neck, lapping at the metal embedded there, and felt more than heard the way Jensen gasped.

Jensen rolled his hips, tugging his own pants away, and Adam could feel the slick heat of his erection when he pulled himself out. It, at least, still felt unaugmented. Adam wanted to look, but he also never wanted to leave his spot at Jensen's shoulder.

"Here," Jensen said. He grabbed Adam's wrist and guided both their hands down between their bodies.

Adam moaned at the first touch, and wrapped his hand as far as he could reach around both their dicks as he caught on to what Jensen wanted. Jensen's hand met his, the metal a contrast to his sweat-slick palm, and then he guided Adam to drag both their hands down the lengths of their pressed-close dicks.

With a hiss, Adam sped up their pace. This wasn't the sort of thing he would have ever imagined with _anyone_, let alone himself, but he couldn't deny how badly he wanted it. He thrust into each stroke, the contrast of Jensen's hand and his own sending shivers down his back, and couldn't stop himself from rocking against Jensen's hips. He felt needy and pathetic, squirming with every noise Jensen made and with every twitch of his dick, running completely on instinct and desperate animal need.

"Please," he groaned against Jensen's collarbone, "please, I—_fuck_, please," halfway to incoherent from this alone.

It was just the two of them here. No one could judge them, no one would know, and it was an embarrassingly short time before Adam jerked and gasped and came across their joined hands.

"Sorry," he gasped, but Jensen didn't seem to care. He kept going, sliding his and Adam's hands both up and down his length, and it wasn't much longer before he tensed and bit back a moan. 

_Fuck_, thought Adam, staring at him. Maybe it was narcissistic, but he could've watched the way Jensen's face finally relaxed as he came over and over again. The pearly drops of come dotting his oil-black hand looked _obscene_; the rise and fall of his chest as he took deep, unsteady breaths wasn't much less filthy. Finally Adam had managed to get Jensen worked up.

"Well." Adam resting his head on Jensen's shoulder once more, the sheer inappropriateness of what they'd just done finally sinking in. _Himself_. He'd slept with himself. He was pretty sure he'd give any therapist a field day right about now. "That was. Ah."

"Shh," said Jensen. He smeared the side of his hand across Adam's jacket—fair enough, he supposed, considering it wasn't his to begin with—and then wrapped his arms loosely around Adam.

Right. _Right_. Adam was breathing hard too, and his hands felt unsteady. It was just sex. It shouldn't mean anything. But all the same he felt raw.

_My first time_, he thought dryly, and let himself relax against Jensen for a moment.

* * *

It was a while before either of them moved. Adam would have been fine with never moving again, but eventually the pins-and-needles in his leg beat out the part of him that just wanted to go back to sleep. He sat up, awkwardly, and took stock of himself. 

He looked like a complete mess. No surprise there.

At his side, Jensen sighed. The room seemed lighter now; the first hint of dawn was starting to crawl through the blinds. Adam could see the lines on Jensen's face better now, could fully appreciate just how bone-deep exhausted he had to be. Had he slept at all last night? Or had he spent the time Adam was asleep watching over him?

"You need a shower," Jensen said, glancing Adam's way. "You smell like ammonia."

"Ugh." Adam grimaced. His skin still felt tacky in some places too. He'd been too tired—and then too distracted—to think about it. "Is it okay if I use yours?"

"Of course," he said, perfectly casual, as if he hadn't expected Adam to ask at all. "It's just down the hall." He eyed Adam, and then added, "And you should eat something too."

God. This was going to be the strangest part of it all—not meeting his future self, but being _worried over_ by his future self. Adam disentangled his limbs from Jensen's as he stood, resisting the urge to run his hands across his skin and augmentations once more. 

"Hey," Jensen said, before he could step away. "Ah. Also. We should—"

"We don't have to talk about it," Adam said. 

Jensen groaned and pressed his hands against his face. "At some point we do."

"Maybe. But not now. Like you said, I need to eat."

"Fair enough, I guess." The look in Jensen's eyes said he wasn't buying it, but at least he wouldn't push it just yet.

For a moment, Adam hesitated. He stepped in closer, leaned in, and pressed a closed-mouth kiss to Jensen's forehead, right at the spot where the skin had been carved out for a hexagonal brand. 

"Thanks," he said, and then before Jensen could stop him he fled down the hall.

Adam didn't let himself stop to think until he was safely behind the bathroom door, standing in the shower with the spray running down his back. He leaned his head against the glass wall and said, "Fuck." He really did have it bad.

_Survive_, he thought. _Pay those bastards back_. And hopefully find out how many more Adam Jensens there were being kept in vats somewhere while he was at it. It was a plan, at least, something to work for that felt more useful than panicking. 

Adam thought for a while. Mulled it over as he washed the last of the tank gunk out of his hair, considered it more as he trimmed his beard in the fogged-up mirror. Before he stepped out of the bathroom, he added one more point to his mental to-do list: _Keep Jensen safe_.

He'd heard the implications in his older self's words. Jensen had spoken like he was nothing, like risking his own life to break Adam out hadn't meant a thing. Apparently he'd gotten reckless (_more_ reckless, Adam's captain would have said) with his life since he left the force.

If he wouldn't take care of himself, Adam would. It was as simple as that.

Adam took one more deep breath, staring at his fuzzy reflection in the mirror, preparing to meet this strange new world in the light of day. 

He could do this. He was ready.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed! This was a delight to write.


End file.
